Page 8 - M 2ct News Today

Europe is once again the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic amid a "false sense of security" over the protection offered by vaccines, World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office said on Wednesday it is moving to terminate its trade retaliation case against India after Washington and New Delhi agreed on a global tax deal transition arrangement that will withdraw India's digital services tax.

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said on Tuesday it is launching air raids on "legitimate" Houthi military targets in the highly condensed capital Sanaa, and asked civilians not to gather around or approach potential targets, Saudi state TV reported.

The U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa said on Tuesday that "nascent progress" toward getting all parties to Ethiopia's conflict into negotiations on a ceasefire is at risk of being outpaced by an "alarming" increase in military operations.

Nigeria's central bank kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 11.5% for a seventh straight time on Tuesday but cited persistent insecurity in large parts of the country as a major downside risk to the recovery of Africa's biggest economy.

The thousands of migrants on the European Union's eastern borders with Belarus is an attempt by the Minsk regime to destabilise the EU, rather than a migration crisis, the head of the executive European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia remained committed to fulfilling its OPEC+ obligations and that President Vladimir Putin had no plans to contact OPEC+ partners despite talk of key consumer countries releasing their strategic oil reserves.

Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday that Iran could have nuclear weaponry within five years, adding that such progress would be unaffected by its current talks with world powers on a new deal to cap its nuclear technologies.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Tuesday urged U.S. energy companies to increase oil supply amid "enormous profits" as President Joe Biden seeks to bring down the price of gasoline for American families.

Slovakia has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus among backyard poultry, the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said on Tuesday.